CONCLUSION

Political spatial variations—from local voting patterns to the spatial arrangement of international power blocs—add yet another dimension to the complex human mosaic. In particular, nation-states operate as vital functional regions, which help shape many aspects of culture. Regions constantly change as political innovations ebb and flow across their surfaces. Political phenomena as varied as the nation-state, separatist movements, women’s suffrage, and the territorial expansion of countries move along the paths of diffusion. Globalization interacts with political geography in complex and even contradictory ways. The forces of globalization have strengthened some features of the nation-state and weakened others.

Nature-culture relations are important to political geography, and the tools of political ecology help us understand the links between systems of power and the physical environment. Countries do not exist in an environmental vacuum. The spatial patterns of landforms often find reflection in boundaries, core areas, and geopolitical strategies. Likewise, political culture very much influences our ideas and judgments about landscape and environment. Finally, politics leaves diverse imprints on the cultural landscape, and landscapes often provide the symbolism and visual metaphors to support or refute political ideologies. Political geography is clearly important to understanding the human mosaic.

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DOING GEOGRAPHY

The Complex Geography of Congressional Redistricting

Congressional redistricting normally happens every 10 years in the United States, following each national census. In some cases, such as Texas in 2002, redistricting occurs between censuses. Although soon proved wrong, newspaper accounts at the time predicted that Texas’s midcensus redistricting would protect the Republican Party’s majority in the U.S. Congress for the foreseeable future. Does this midcensus redistricting fall under the category of Republican gerrymandering, as some claim, or is it, as the Texas Republican Party argues, a case of necessary adjustments in response to population shifts? Either way, the case of Texas demonstrates how critically important the drawing of congressional district boundaries is to democratic governance.

This exercise requires you to identify cases of possible gerrymandering in your home state or an adjacent state. To do so, follow the steps below.

Steps to Identifying Gerrymandering

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This question is more politically charged than it may seem at first. It is vehemently debated, and the side of the border from which one is observing greatly influences the answer. “Fence” suggests neighborliness; “wall” suggests isolation and exclusion. The two governments responsible for the structures, Israel and the United States, both argue that these are fences, which increase security for citizens on both sides. The U.S. Congress passed the Secure Fence Act following the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The act authorized the expenditure of more than $1 billion to build a 700-mile (1126-kilometer) fence on the U.S. border with Mexico to improve “homeland security.” Critics argue that it is really a wall meant to stop the across-the-border flow of undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America, and that there is little hope of its stopping terrorists from entering the United States. They also note that the three coastlines and the border with Canada remain without similar barriers.

The case of the barrier between Israeli and Arab-Palestinian lands is even more hotly disputed. In 2004 the Israeli government began building a physical barrier between its territory and that controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that the “antiterrorist fence” is an act of self-defense against terrorists entering from Palestinian-ruled lands, such as the Gaza Strip. They also note that only 3 percent of the barrier is a concrete wall, whereas the remainder is a chain-link fence. The Palestinian Authority counters that the “wall” violates civil and human rights by cutting off communities’ access to schools, workplaces, and families. The International Court of Justice seems to support the Palestinian position, ruling that construction of “the wall” is contrary to international law. Whichever side of the fence you come down on, these barriers are powerful reminders of the continuing relevance of international borders.

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Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

You can learn more about political geography on the Internet at the following web sites:

Agnew, John. 1998. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. London: Routledge.

Agnew, John. 2011. Globalization and Sovereignty. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield.

Agnew, John, and Luca Muscarà. 2012. Making Political Geography. 2nd ed. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield.

Berman, Ari. 2012. “How the GOP Is Resegregating the South.” The Nation, February 20. Accessed July 4, 2013. http://www.thenation.com/article/165976/how-gop-resegregating-south#axzz2YaEuHCe4.

Blaikie, Piers, and Harold Brookfield. 1987. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen.

Blouet, Brian W. 1987. Halford Mackinder: A Biography. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.

Bradsher, Keith. 2012. “China Blocks Web Access To Times After Article.” New York Times, October 26, A12.

Dalby, Simon. 2002. “Environmental Governance.” In R. Johnston, P. Taylor, and M. Watts (eds.), Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World, pp. 427-440. London: Routledge.

Draper, Robert. 2012. “The League of Dangerous Mapmakers.” The Atlantic, October. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-league-of/309084/.

Elazar, Daniel J. 1994. The American Mosaic: The Impact of Space, Time, and Culture on American Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Enghoff, Martin, Bente Hansen, Abdi Umar, Bjørn Gildestad, Matthew Owen, and Alex Obara. 2010. In Search of Protection and Livelihoods: Socio-economic and Environmental Impacts of Dadaab Refugee Camps on Host Communities. Nairobi: Government of Kenya.

Gastner, M., C. Shalizi, and M. Newman. 2004. “Maps and Cartograms of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election Results.” University of Michigan Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

Hollander, Gail. 2005. “The Material and Symbolic Role of the Everglades in National Politics.” Political Geography 24(4): 449-475.

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Hyndman, Jennifer, and Wenona Giles. 2011. “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 18(3): 361-379.

Jones, Martin, and Rhys Jones. 2004. “Nation States, Ideological Power and Globalization: Can Geographers Catch the Boat? Geoforum 35: 409-424.

Mackinder, Halford J. 1904. “The Geographical Pivot of History.” Geographical Journal 23: 421-437.

Mitchell, Katharyne. 1998. “Fast Capital, Race, and the Monster House.” In R. George (ed.), Burning Down the House: Recycling Domesticity, pp. 187-212. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Mitchell, Katharyne. 2002. “Cultural Geographies of Transnationality.” In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift (eds.), Handbook of Cultural Geography, pp. 74-87. London: SAGE.

Neumann, Roderick P. 1995. “Local Challenges to Global Agendas: Conservation, Economic Liberalization, and the Pastoralists’ Rights Movement in Tanzania.” Antipode 27(4): 363-382.

Neumann, Roderick P. 2002. “The Postwar Conservation Boom in British Colonial Africa.” Environmental History 7(1): 22-47.

Neumann, Roderick P. 2004. “Nature-State-Territory: Toward a Critical Theorization of Conservation Enclosures.” In R. Peet and M. Watts (eds.), Liberation Ecologies, 2nd ed., pp. 195-217. London: Routledge.

O’Reilly, Kathleen, and Gerald R. Webster. 1998. “A Sociodemographic and Partisan Analysis of Voting in Three Anti-Gay Rights Referenda in Oregon.” Professional Geographer 50: 498-515.

Ó Tuathail, Gearóid. 1996. Critical Geopolitics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Paulin, C., and John K. Wright. 1932. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. New York: American Geographical Society and the Carnegie Institute.

Ramadan, Adam. 2008. “The Guests’ Guests: Palestinian Refugees, Lebanese Civilians, and the War of 2006.” Antipode 40(4): 658-677.

Rumley, Dennis, and Julian V. Minghi (eds.). 1991. The Geography of Border Landscapes. London: Routledge.

Sack, Robert D. 1986. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Studies in Historical Geography, No. 7. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Schuttea, Sebastian, and Nils B. Weidmann. 2011. “Diffusion Patterns of Violence in Civil Wars.” Political Geography 30: 143-152.

Smith, Dan, et al. 1997. The State of War and Peace Atlas. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin.

Smith, Graham. 1999. “Russia, Geopolitical Shifts and the New Eurasianism.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24: 481-500.

Spykman, Nicholas J. 1944. The Geography of the Peace. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Ter-Ghazaryan, Diana K. 2013. “‘Civilizing the City Center’: Symbolic Spaces and Narratives of the Nation in Yerevan’s Post-Soviet Landscape.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 41(4): 570-589.

Toal, Gerard, and John Agnew. 2002. “Introduction: Political Geographies, Geopolitics and Culture.” In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift (eds.), Handbook of Cultural Geography, pp. 455-461. London: SAGE.

(For additional suggested readings, see the Contemporary Human Geography LaunchPad: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/DomoshCHG1e.)

Agnew, John. 2011. Globalization and Sovereignty. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield. A leading political geographer joins the debate over the effects of globalization on nation-state sovereignty. Very convincingly argued with helpful examples.

Agnew, John, and Luca Muscarä. 2012. Making Political Geography. 2nd ed. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield. This book provides an excellent overview of the field of political geography, highlighting the contributions of key thinkers from the nineteenth century to the present.

Dalby, Simon, and Gearóid Ó Tuathail (eds.). 1998. Rethinking Geopolitics. London: Routledge. Fifteen contributors to this postmodernist collection address questions of political identity and popular culture, state violence and genocide, militarism, gender and resistance, cyberwar, and the mass media. They suggest that political geography needs to be reconceptualized for the twenty-first century.

Herb, Guntram H., and David H. Kaplan (eds.). 1999. Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, and Scale. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. This collection of essays by 14 leading political geographers focuses on the geographical issue of territoriality using case studies of troubled countries and regions at different scales.

Hooson, David (ed.). 1994. Geography and National Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Essays examine the connection between identity and homeland in a wide variety of settings and argue that the globalization of culture has strengthened the bonds between place and identity.

Kearns, Gerry. 2009. Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder. New York: Oxford University Press. This book helps explain Mackinder’s key ideas by placing his writings in their historical context. It presents convincing arguments on why his ideas are still salient to some political analysts. A definitive work on MacKinder’s understanding of global geopolitics.

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Olwig, Kenneth. 2002. Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. This is an impressively researched historical study of the importance of landscape in shaping the ideas of nation and national identity in England and the United States.

Popescu, G. 2011. Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-first Century: Understanding Borders. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. A comprehensive look at nation-state borders and their continuing importance in shaping daily lives. It includes discussions of the historical origins of modern state borders and contemporary questions such as the way mobility shapes and is shaped by borders.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1991. Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. A collection of Wallerstein’s essays that link the collapse of the Soviet Union to the end of U.S. hegemony around the world.

Williams, Colin H. (ed.). 1993. The Political Geography of the New World Order. London: Belhaven. A collection of essays that explore the geopolitical consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rising importance of Europe and Japan.

Geopolitics. This journal explores contemporary geopolitics and geopolitical change with particular reference to territorial problems and issues of state sovereignty. Published by Frank Cass. Volume 1 appeared in 1996. http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fgeo20/.U3ZaBJhUOew

Political Geography. This is a journal devoted exclusively to political geography. Formerly titled Political Geography Quarterly, the journal changed its name in 1992. Published by Elsevier. Volume 1 appeared in 1982.

Space and Polity. This journal is dedicated to understanding the changing relationships between the state and regional/local forms of governance. It highlights the work of scholars whose research interests lie in studying the relationships among space, place, and politics. Published by Carfax Publishing. Volume 1 appeared in 1997. http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cspp20/.U3ZanJhUOew

Figure 6.4 A, Armenia; B, Azerbaijan; C, Iran; a, Nagorno-Karabakh; b, the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic; c, the Okhair Eskipara enclave; d, Sofulu enclave; e, Kyarki enclave; f, Bashkend enclave.